November 18, 2004

Fantasy Updates

No, not that kind of fantasy update. That one still involves Jessica Alba and Elisha Cuthbert wearing nothing but high heels and Johan Santana jerseys. I'm talking about fantasy sports, silly.

  • Remember my fantasy basketball team that I was so unhappy about drafting? Well, we're about 10% into the season and the Minnesota Fatboys are in first place, despite the fact that Donyell Marshall (benched and then injured) was my third-round pick. I'm sure it won't last (Grant Hill, Ron Artest and Drew Gooden are all playing prominent roles), but the season has already gone better than I thought it would. Despite Ray Allen's hot start, I am definitely kicking myself for going against my instincts and passing on LeBron James with the ninth overall pick.
  • My Baseball Think Factory League fantasy football team started the season 0-3, but has since gone 6-1 to climb into third place. All of this despite the fact that I drafted Curtis Martin, didn't play him for the first few weeks while he had monster games, and then traded him away for a quarterback, Aaron Brooks, who I haven't even been starting lately. Martin is currently fourth among NFL running backs in fantasy points per game and I have started an 80-year-old Emmitt Smith in four straight weeks. I believe that's called winning in spite of yourself.
  • As I've gotten involved in the online baseball community over the last couple years, I've had the pleasure of making a lot of new friends. One of the nicest and most interesting guys I've met along the way is Vinay Kumar, who is an occasional contributor at The Hardball Times and does a lot of work to keep THT's website running behind the scenes. Vinay is a great guy and we actually roomed together at the SABR convention in Cincinnati this past summer.

    I say all these nice things about him today because I feel horrible for what I've done to him over the past few weeks. You see, Vinay is in both of my Diamond-Mind baseball keeper leagues and is also in the BTF fantasy football league with me. And over the course of the last month or so, I have beaten him in all three leagues.

    But wait, it's even worse than it sounds. I knocked him out of the postseason in both Diamond-Mind leagues, once in the American League Championship Series and once in the American League Division Series, and his team had a better regular-season record than my team in both instances. And then, to top it all off, I used Jake Plummer's second great game in a row to beat him by 24 points in football two weeks ago.

    Some might ask why exactly pointing out my three victories over Vinay to an audience is doing something positive for him, and I really don't have an answer for that. The only thing I can say is that that's the sort of guy I am -- I'll beat you three times in two different sports, end your season in two different leagues, and then I'll talk about it on my blog in a way that sort of sounds like I'm genuinely sorry for what I did and sort of sounds like I just wanted to brag about doing it.

    And yes, if we decide to room together again at this summer's SABR convention in Toronto, I fully expect Vinay to kill me in my sleep.

    • Today at The Hardball Times:

    - Inside the Mind of Brian Sabean (by Studes)

    - Fantasy Keepers: Second Basemen (by Ben Jacobs)

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